When Sergeant Spencer is killed, the search for his murder opens the divisions in the crew as the investigation proceeds.
Tropes
- Asshole Victim: Spencer, as Rush points out. Though it turns out he did it to himself.
- Rush, at the end of the episode.
- Brutal Honesty: Rush about Sgt. Spencer.Rush: …he was hoarding water and food, involved in several confrontations, I doubt you'll find many tears shed over this man.
- Call-Back: Rush thinks the ancient chair they found in the previous episode is an early version of the Ancient Repository of Knowledge from SG-1, and notes that General O'Neil used them twice and survived. Volker counters that this time, they don't have any Asgard around to help them out if things go wrong.
- Cassandra Truth: When debating the idea of using the chair, Eli points out to Dr. Franklin that, if the chair really was safe to use, Rush would have been the first one to sit in it. Sadly, Franklin doesn't listen to him.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Rush staring up at the sky of the planet he's been marooned on, serving as the cliffhanger for the midseason finale.
- Closest Thing We Got: Chloe serves as Young's defense attorney during the trial, even though her background is in political science, not law. She does a surprisingly good job at it, in fact.
- Courtroom Episode
- Driven to Suicide: Sergeant Spencer's apparent suicide sets off the plot, though the crew doesn't figure it out until much later in the episode.
- Frame-Up: When the gun is found, Scott insists that it was concealed in Young's quarters as part of a frameup. As it turns out, it was: Rush planted the gun to get remove Young from command.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Rush's justification for his attempted Frame-Up of Young.
- Kangaroo Court: Not deliberately, but there are less than 80 people on Destiny, and none of them are actually lawyers or police, so they're making it up as they go.
- Left for Dead: Rush.
- Let No Crisis Go to Waste: It turns out Rush was the one who found Spencer's dead body, and decided to plant the gun in Young's quarters and delete the Sergeant's Kino suicide video, as part of a gambit to undermine Young's authority and gain unrestricted access to the Ancient interface chair.
- Never Suicide: While Spencer's death appears to be a suicide, the characters suspect it to be a murder made to look like a suicide because the gun is missing. Subverted when it turns out to have been a suicide after all, but Rush stole the gun so he could frame Col. Young for his death.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Young, to Rush, after Rush admitted to framing him because he thinks the Colonel's dangerous in his position of commander of the ship.
- Oh, Crap!: The look on Rush's face when he regains consciousness on the alien planet… hours after the sun has set.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Young allows the hearings to go forward, even though Wray is obviously biased against him, because he knows stopping it will just make him look even more guilty to the rest of the crew.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: It turns out Spencer ran out of the prescription-strength sleeping pills he was addicted to, resulting in severe withdrawal symptoms which led to his suicide when he couldn't get any more of them.
- Too Dumb to Live: For all his smarts, Rush picks the worst possible time to mouth off to Col. Young and give him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech: when the two of them are standing alone on an alien planet with only a few minutes left on the Destiny's jump countdown. Unsurprisingly, Young beats the crap out of him and leaves him behind.
- Unwitting Pawn: Rush not so subtly manipulates Dr. Franklin into sitting in the Ancient chair when no one's around to stop him, by dangling the possibility of accessing the Destiny's command codes as bait.
- Wham Line - When Young and Rush are alone at the alien crash site.Young: I know it was you.
